ugh... "they're" ;-)

In the Army, we had a saying that the officers/senior staff's job, in addition to things like battle planning during exercises/times of conflict, was to be "in charge of the beans and the bullets". Meaning, keep the resources flowing that the team needs to keep working as efficiently as possible.

It's no different with management - as a manager of a staff of 11, my job is to keep them working as best they can but STAY OUT OF THEIR WAY. I don't have to know the absolute minute details of how/why their doing something, as long as the project stays on track. If it means making sure a delivery of materials is ready so they can start the project on time, it means that. If it means making sure we have proper drawings/documentation before we start the project, it means that. If it means running out to a vendor to resupply something when the shit hits the fan, it means that. If it means buying pizza because we had to work late, it means that. Keep them working and focused on the task, not the support needs. But it does NOT mean I get in their way and hover over them, constantly checking their work. Most managers that I've met who know every specific detail about how to do the job their employees are doing aren't actually good "people" managers - they're micromanagers who usually suffer from a variety of social disorders, shall we say, and couldn't "manage" their way out of a paper bag.

Good management is as much about knowing what NOT to do as knowing what TO do.

Obviously, if your team actually ARE a bunch of idiots, you have to change your tactics a bit, but in this economy, why do you have idiots working for you? ;-)

I was going to comment on how blatantly stupid the whole summary is - the actual story, in case anyone missed it, is that the PS3 will be getting Netflix streaming to the console, first via a BD-Live workaround, then through a firmware upgrade at a later date.

However, from the very first sentence of the summary, it takes an otherwise mildly interesting story (I think it's cool) with a perfectly valid subject line, and DIRECTLY baits the anti-MS crowd (who bit it, and hard), becomes downright masturbatory and garners the expected response. Meaningful discourse indeed.

PS - hey fanboy retards - buy one of the OTHER consoles (whatever one you're slagging on, in case you're confused), then talk about which one is "better". They all have strengths and weaknesses.

I'll probably get shot for this, but I found Same GNOME ridiculously addictive. There are clones of it for other desktop environments, but there is something nice and polished about the GNOME version that I found lacking in the clones.

Ok, how about this: proper spelling is a sign of a writer's respect for the reader off his work. Misspellings are jarring to the flow of reading comprehension

Why do you hate me so?

Seriously, I move we vote it worst portmanteau ever.

Seriously. I grew up watching the original series, and I have to say, it was pretty crappy. I love the "re-imagination".

do they realize the cost that might incur to all these non infringing companies

I'm fairly certain that they don't, and I'm also fairly certain that even if they did, that fact would be wholly irrelevant to them.

Wow. The fact that this post was labelled as flamebait proves the incredible difficulty of trying to have an objective discussion, at least wrt Linux/Windows, on this forum. I cannot for the life of me see what the parent said that would merit a flamebait mod. If he said it sucked, or that only losers who live in their parents' basement use it (as opposed to Windows users who don't know a computer from their bread machine), or something along those lines, I could see it. They said they try it, they have problems (they even hint at what the problem usually is), and that they give up in it. And that makes them hesitant to recommend it. Seems reasonable to me.

But then again, I clearly work for MS, so don't listen to what I say. ;-)

Posts like that are made by Microsoft marketing people.

I realized reading back over this that is exactly what my post sounds like. I cannot remember specific examples, of course, which doesn't strengthen my position. Over the years (I've been using Linux off and on since the RH 5.x days), it's been invariably one thing or another. Usually soundcard or videocard related.

Actually, that does remind me - the last issue I had were ATI's drivers under Ubuntu 8.04. I could not, for the life of me, get it to recognize my monitors correctly, in the proper order. It identified them properly, but it would NOT allow me to position them properly in relation to one another. No amount of deleting the .conf file would allow it to detect AND arrange them properly, so I ended up giving up on it.

I realize that this is likely more an ATI issue, but it didn't flavor the whole "Linux" thing well. Using the official drivers, from the same company, under Windows resulted in a properly working setup with no fiddling whatsoever. I could have probably switched the cables around, but that would have then screwed around with the aforementioned properly working Windows setup.

I can assure you, for what little good it will do, that I am not an MS shill. :) Nothing would make me happier than NOT having to go through what I see is the inevitable bullshit I see coming down the pipe with MS' crap "you don't own your operating system, you license it from us at a yearly subscription fee" policy.

It's getting near time again for me to give Linux another whirl. I can honestly say that nothing would make me happier to be wrong with my previous assumptions about the viability of Linux. The only thing I require a PC w/ Windows for anymore is gaming (ok, and AutoCAD), and I'm finding that even gaming is being supplanted by consoles for me (PS3 and 360). If they could only get a really good RPG on consoles (no, I mean a GOOD one...)

To be fair, Republicans also listen to Rush Limbaugh. Whom do you think is a more crazy choice for them to listen?

I honestly don't know that there is a correct answer to this question.

Whether the submitter seems like a pissy old man (woman?) or not does not change the fact that his point is valid. I work in an industry not even closely related to most things that this website deals with, and I see it all the time. Kids coming out of school expecting to get jobs 2-3 levels from the top of the organization, rather than 2-3 levels from the bottom. Interestingly enough, I've also dealt with a few people who did NOT go to college, and perhaps not surprisingly, their expectations are quite a bit more realistic. Guess which one I'd rather hire? I can teach someone without a lot of experience how to do my job, but I have a tough time even wanting to bother to undo a shitty or unrealistic attitude.

I'm in a similar boat. I try Linux, of some flavor or another, about once a year. Play with it for a month, get pissed off because of the damned dependency hell (apt-get has solved a lot of this, but it's still far from perfect), and give up on it. Again and again and again. I *WANT* to like and use Linux, but I'm one of the most computer-savvy guys I know, and it frustrates the living hell out of me. Windows just... works.

/flame on

Sounds like a plot from Armageddon.

Or Aliens.

What're they going to do, throw jelly donuts and beer at us? I, for one, welcome our new jelly-donut-and-beer-throwing overlords.